Canadian Payroll Reporter

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Payroll must also decide whether it will require all em- ployees to receive their pay state- ments electronically or whether they will have the option of stick- ing with paper statements. Some employers make it mandatory for all new hires while giving cur- rent employees the choice, says Vincent. To encourage employees to go the electronic route, she says payroll could put the onus on employees to opt out. "You don't have to by default make them opt in. You can au- tomatically enroll them and just give them an opt-out option. You have to act to opt out." Another issue to consider is communication. "Having a plan and including communication in the plan is the biggest piece of all. And my theory around communication is always early and often," says Vincent. Payroll can use the company intranet, e-newsletters and inserts with pay slips, among other commu- nication devices, to let employ- ees know about the change and address any concerns they may have. Vincent advises employers to also make sure they include training in the implementation plan. "It's a best practice to do the training. Certainly, in this day and age, most people can navi- gate a website and most of the e-statement delivery systems are very user-friendly, but as part of the communication plan, you absolutely have to provide some guidance. It doesn't have to be a formal lunch-and-learn walk through, but there are training materials that should be pro- vided." Pilot testing important Gentile suggests pilot testing the change before implementing it, especially if the employer plans from REMINDER on page 5 to provide more than pay state- ments electronically. "It is always very healthy to go out to a subset of employees, es- pecially where it's not a high-tech organization and there might be some reluctance to going online for this information. Select those you perceive as being comfort- able with technology," he says. "Roll out the online pay state- ments and self-service in general to those employees for a small portion of time. What you learn from that is the type of commu- nication that you need to share with them, how much learning they really need and you also get a sense of what type of support you might have to deal with once you launch it to the broader or- ganization." Gentile adds that the pilot group can become a key re- source for other employees. "As you roll it out to the broader base, those pilot employees can actually become your champion support. (Other employees may say,) 'Maybe I'll go and ask them where is the website and how do I register as opposed to calling payroll first.'" He says another important element to success is to peri- odically remind employees that they have an e-statement option, especially if not all employees have signed up for it. "Keep some attention on it. Just because you have an- nounced it, it doesn't mean (the employees) are going to retain it. They may have been very busy working on something at the time that announcement came in." Gentile says some companies run contests to promote self-ser- vice options like e-statements. "One of the favourites that I have heard of was that the first department to have every em- ployee registered for self-service gets a pizza lunch," he says. "Another organization gave away a vacation day. For every- one who registered before a certain date, you were put into a draw and were going to get a free vacation day. That type of thing puts some attention on it," he says. "What we've seen is really quick adoption in a very short period of time. I think this orga- nization with the vacation day was able to achieve 80 per cent employee registration within a couple of months." March 2015 March 2015 | CPR CPR Self-audits new Act to examine for compliance and the date on which the em- ployer must report the results. "Under the act, the Employ- ment Standards officer has pret- ty broad discretion in the scope of the order for the employer to conduct the self-audit. They can specify the method and the form of the report the employer has to (make)," Cunningham says. "Conceptually, the officer comes in and says, 'I want you to do a self-audit with respect to hours of work' and then the employer is going to be expected to be able to produce records and verify that they are in com- pliance with hours of work or if they discover that they are not, come back and say how are we going to correct this." If a self-audit finds that an employer owes wages to one or more employees, the employer will be required to include in the report the name of every em- ployee to whom it owes wages, the amount owing, how it calcu- lated the amount and proof that it paid the outstanding amount. Employment Standards officers will have the authority to issue payment orders for any out- standing amounts. To get out in front of this re- quirement, Cunningham comes back to the importance of keep- ing good records. "This is a good time for every employer to do a self-audit of their payroll practices and their record-keeping practices." Whether the issue is an em- ployee complaint to Employ- ment Standards for unpaid wages or a mandatory self-audit, he advises employers with ques- tions or concerns to seek legal advice. "If the employer is at all un- sure, they should contact their counsel. Counsel can advise them with respect to their rights and a strategy for dealing with the situation." from CLAIMS on page 6 Promote new service

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